Hotels, dorms to be tapped as COVID-19 isolation centers

MANILA, Philippines — The government will book hotel rooms and use dormitories to increase the number of isolation centers for COVID-19 patients as it ramps up its contact-tracing efforts, according to presidential spokesperson Harry Roque.

Roque said the government plan to use public schools as quarantine centers would have to wait for the passage of the Bayanihan to Recover as One Act as this would provide the necessary funding for the schools’ refurbishment.

The government would have to buy beds and linen, and provide for kitchens in public schools before these could be used to isolate COVID-19 patients, Roque said in a television interview on Wednesday.

No tourism anyway

He also said the government had booked hotel rooms because tourism was not allowed anyway, and would use available dormitories as well.

The drug rehabilitation center in Fort Magsaysay, Nueva Ecija province, would also be converted into an isolation center, he said.

The government is turning to “anything and everything that we can use for isolation purposes without having to build new ones,” Roque said. Space building goes with the improvement in the government’s contact-tracing efforts, he said.

“And because we have improved tracing now, we need more isolation facilities and that’s what the reboot is all about,” he said, referring to the two-week stricter lockdown imposed on Metro Manila, Bulacan, Cavite, Rizal and Laguna, which ended on Tuesday.

Roque noted that tracing 10 contacts of each of the 4,000 COVID-19 patients reported in a day would mean 40,000 people who may have to be isolated.

Baguio City Mayor Benjamin Magalong has been training people on effective contact tracing, and has proposed a model of tracing 37 people for every one positive person, he said.

But this would “not be practical” in Metro Manila, so officials agreed to trace 10 to 15 people for every positive coronavirus case and have them tested for the disease.

“And these individuals will be given swab tests right away, and if need be, isolated when facilities are already available. Because we have learned these from the mistakes of other countries that unless they have their own rooms and bathrooms, they must be kept in isolation facilities,” he said.

Hospital capacity

Roque also said hospital capacity was being expanded with the addition of more beds for COVID-19 patients.

Modular or tent-like treatment centers are being put up to accommodate more patients to ease the pressure on the health system, he said.

“So we took advantage of the two-week break asked by [medical] front-liners to improve capacity, improve testing, isolation, as well as our tracing capacity,” he added.

On Wednesday, the Department of Health (DOH) recorded 4,650 additional coronavirus infections, pushing the national tally to 173,774 cases.

Of the new cases submitted by 97 of 105 accredited laboratories, 3,848 got sick between Aug. 6 and 19, while 237 fell ill between Aug. 1 and 5.

Metro Manila accounted for most of the additional cases, with 3,092, followed by Cavite (249), Laguna (194), Rizal (189) and Bulacan (136).

The DOH said the total number of recovered patients climbed to 113,481 with the recovery of 716 patients. The death toll, however, jumped to 2,795 with the deaths of 111 patients.

That left 57,498 active cases, of which the DOH said 91.4 percent were mild, 6.5 percent asymptomatic, 0.9 percent severe, and 1.2 percent critical.

Of the newly reported fatalities, 76 died in August, 13 in July, eight in June, nine in Mayand five in April.

Fifty-two of the fatalities were from Metro Manila, 29 from Central Visayas, 11 from Calabarzon, six from Central Luzon, four from Zamboanga, four repatriates, two from Western Visayas, and one each from Bicol, Davao and the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

—With a report from Jovic Yee